SEO, Content Marketing, and Social Media: The Best of June 2014

We know everyone is trying to get out of the office early to start their July 4th weekends, so we won’t waste too much of your time getting to the roundup. If you’re new to this, each month we gather up the best articles from the worlds of social media, content marketing, and SEO for your convenience. Here’s our favorites from June. Feel free to enjoy them on the beach or by the pool, and if you’re looking for the same great content in between roundups, don’t forget to check in with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

SEO

If you’re reading the Moz blog, then you probably have a decent understanding of Google and its algorithm changes. However, there is probably a good percentage of the Moz audience that is still confused about the effects that Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird can have on your site.

Would you like to reach out to an international audience and expand your business’s Web presence? If so, an international SEO process might offer a scalable and cost-effective way to grow and reach your desired foreign target market.

Ask any SEO what the most difficult, confounding and valuable part of optimization is, and you’ll invariably get a consensus: link building. Even the term “link building” has become so controversial that many marketers are shying away from it in favor of “content marketing” or “online PR.”

Success in today’s competitive markets depends in no small measure on knowing your competition. The words Big Data and Competitive Intelligence are familiar to most. You hear them everywhere because they are key components of the online marketing world today.

People who surf the Web all day love short cuts and efficiencies. When you’re writing an online article, it seems obvious to link out to websites that your readers might want to check out. You’re just making it convenient for them, right?

There has been some talk lately of whether negative SEO exists or not – something that rears it head now and again. Google say it’s incredibly rare, not sure how they’d know this but I guess it depends on how it’s defined? Link spamming, scraping etc. or even hacking cracking?

Ah, social media and SEO. Some will tell you they go together like Batman and Robin, and others will tell you they go together like exact match anchor text and a Penguin update! There’s been a lot of confusion about whether the two go hand in hand in recent years, but it’s surprising how many people in the SEO industry waste this fantastic platform as a result.

Content Marketing

Do you value your readers? Do you care about what THEY think and what problems THEY might have? Then why torture them with keyword stuffed headlines and hollow, over-optimized articles? “But it’s for SEO!”, – you might say.

Six in ten of us are visual learners: people who learn best when information is delivered through the eyes; by looking at images or videos, or reading. That’s just one of the reasons why visual content is so important in today’s content marketing world.

Small businesses have historically been slow to adopt the content marketing strategies that corporate marketers use. But as SEO has evolved significantly in recent years, it has become clear that small businesses need to include how-tos, e-books, comparison guides, and other content marketing techniques to remain competitive in the rankings.

You know what keeps most of our content from attaining epic status, don’t you? Fear. Our fear of looking foolish. Of negative responses on social media. Or, worse, of getting hardly any visits, social shares, leads, or sales from our best efforts.

Social Media

What types of people are most likely to share content online? And why are they sharing it? The following infographic by StatPro categorizes people into six types of sharers: hipsters, careerists, altruists, connectors, boomerangs, and selectives.

Most companies treat their social media like a marathon. They have a year-long calendar, they post on the company blog and social media channels regularly, and they monitor brand mentions so that someone can answer questions and engage with customers, day in and day out.

Like everyone, you hope every piece of content you post gains some traction, and with any luck, goes viral. But all too often even well-crafted posts end up in the social media graveyard, with just a small number of shares and likes.

No doubt there is a lot of nonsense that occurs everyday on Twitter but isn’t this the case for any social media site? Selfies, foodie pics, location statuses, what your cat did for the day and the list goes on. But is Twitter good for business?

Normally we finish up each month’s roundup with Matt Cutts answering questions from the SEO world, but this month we thought you’d enjoy this video of elders using Google Glass.